Self-Help: Fear & Exposure Therapy

It all starts with the amygdala. This almond shaped thing in our brains, is not an obscure Star Wars character. The amygdala is always scanning our surroundings. It was designed to do this! 24/7 from the day we are born to the day we die. For protection against many avenues of harm. If the amygdala picks up on a "problem", it will send out the troops to get the body ready to deal with the issue at hand.

Here's the catch, it's not just scanning the surroundings outside of the body, but also inside. It scans thoughts, emotions, memories. There doesn't seem to be any private territory that this amygdala refrains from scanning. Even more perplexing is the fact that the amygdala holds memories of fear. Remember when you were afraid to ride your bike without training wheels? Well so does your amygdala. 

Mine must be swollen to the point of bursting soon if it's storing all of my fear responses. Poor little nut is over-worked for sure! 

I understand this ingrown alarm system is put in place to protect me from potential danger. Such as a bear, a robber with a gun, a man chasing me down a dark alley etc... So what do we do to get this nut to realize that we don't want to fear certain situations anymore and we want  to press the re-set button, change the code, forget the fear?

Exposure therapy is the answer. Each time I decide not to get out of the house because of the fear I will experience, I only feed that fear and make it stronger and bigger. IT has control over me and my over-worked amygdala.

Over the last few weeks I have put this theory to test because it makes sense to me. However I entered into exposure therapy with some false expectation. I thought because it's "therapy" it shouldn't be that bad. Um, wrong. I soon (3 minutes later) learned that is not what is going to happen. The fear response WILL come. Exposure therapy could be called fear therapy. The purpose is to expose ourselves to the fear, get into the situation and then call in the troops. Breathing, relaxation techniques, mantras.... among other arsenal. We choose the fight response. No flighting or freezing allowed.

The idea is that after several exposures to the same fear, the fear will lessen. For example I will learn that driving 3 miles down the road to the store is not going to kill me after all. You kept trying to ride that bike without training wheels and faced your fears, and off on two glorious wheels you were set free!

I have learned that we have a fear response and we have a relaxation response. Our body automatically initiates the fear response on many occasions. It is up to us to consciously initiate the relaxation response. After practice, I promise you it will become stronger and easier to do. It becomes the most powerful weapon we can use against fear.